The Pill Awards

• Address:
  135 West 41st Street
  New York, NY 10036
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Since 2003, the annual Pill Awards have honored the underground queer artists of New York and beyond.

With categories ranging from the fairly classic (Best Drag, Best Music Video,…) to the more unusual (Best White Trash/Ghetto, Most Twisted Short film), this ceremony makes sure every talent from our ever so diverse community gets to feature their latest artistic creation to a star-studded audience of local scenesters, underground celebrities and nightlife personalities.

The Pill Awards is organized by the crew behind ADD-TV, a TV show broadcasted on New York’s public access channel MNN, every 1st Thursday of the month at 9 PM. This show is another puzzling wonder to emanate from the from the hodgepodge that is Public Access Television. Every episode loosely centered on a particular Theme (“Krak”, “Legendary”, “Trade”…), pieces together a collection of short films, music videos, live performances, and other artistic video montages with a distinctive queer edge.

The show provides a rare channel for queer artists to showcase their work to a somewhat larger audience than the downtown club-scene where many of them originate from. They range from semi-mainstream acts (Ultra Nate, Jonny McGovern) to the more radical performers (Nekked, Jackie Beat) all the way to the downright obscure (Cybercissy), or deceased (Nelson Sullivan), and they never fail to provoke amazement, shock, horror and awe with their creations.

The Pill Awards are merely a pretext for bringing together the artists featured on the show, and delivering an evening full of live performances from an unusual assortment of artists rarely seen on the same stage in one night.

It is also a fun occasion to watch various high spirited nightlife characters stutter through their line as they struggle to decipher the list of nominees for the category they are supposed to introduce to an oblivious audience who is mostly focused on downing cocktails and schmoozing with fellow celebrities in attendance.